Wendell's Mills were located along the Beaverkill and were a well-known early Albany landmark for more than a hundred years. The site included a grist mill and later several factory buildings. They were part of larger family real property holdings that probably extended south from the family homes on upper State Street until they bordered the Schuyler holdings south of the Beaverkill.

During the seventeenth century, at least two mills reputedly were built along the Beaverkill. But their exact location is unclear. In 1729, attorney Evert Wendell petitioned the city council for:

"three or four acres of ground for to build the mill on, lying on the north side of the aforesaid Beaver Kill, it being part of the land which Evert Wendell late of this city had in his life cleared, and also the kill and the use of the water, and also free liberty to make a dam so far distant from the mill up the said kill or creek till he shall have fall enough for his said mill, together with so much ground to lye a gutter from the said dam to the said mill and also liberty to make a wagon path from the mill to the city . . . [it] will be the first grist mill that ever was built within the limits of this city altho' the water has runned there for no us ever since the settlement of this city"

Although
the city council deferred action on that petition claiming the creek
and property requested belonged to the Albany Dutch
Reformed Church, apparently Wendell did build several processing
plants in association with "his" Beaver Creek property. His will
dated 1749 referred to a saw mill, gristmill, and brew house. Wendell
instructed his sons to build a chocolate factory perhaps on that property
as well. Prior to that time, son Abraham
E. Wendell had been so involved with the site that his portrait
was painted in 1737 with his mill in the background. Powered by water
from the Beaverkill, the Wendells ran those mills almost to the end
of the century.

By the time of the American Revolution, a wagon road did connect Wendell's
Mills to the city of Albany. The Albany maps
drawn during the 1790s by State surveyor Simeon De Witt make "Wendell's
Mills" a prominent south Albany feature. However, by that time, the
mill-related activities of the aging Wendell brothers are less than
prominent in the historical record. By 1800, a traveller described
the Beaverkill ravine and noted that Wendell's mills had been abandoned.
In 1802, a map was made of Philip
Wendell's Beaverkill property. Shortly thereafter, Wendell and
his wife sold forty acres of
what he described as "pasture" to developers Abraham G. Wendell and
David Waters.

In 1900, the area was known as Beaver Park and was opened as Albany's first public playground. Ambitious subsequent plans called for athletic fields, a track, natural areas, baths, walkways, and a pool.

Today, the mill site sits beneath the basin of Lincoln Park - perhaps nearby the Lincoln Park pool. The Beaverkill, which provided the water to power the mill, has largely been piped and is beneath the park as it still flows downhill, down Arch Street, across South Pearl, South
Broadway, and into the Hudson.

notes

Sources: This exposition has been formed from community-based
information and a close reading of city maps. It also benefits from
research conducted by historian Tricia
Barbagallo for a school-based program entitled "Life Along the Beaverkill:
A History Walk through Lincoln Park," which she presented in conjunction
with the Thomas O'Brien Academy of Science and Technology (TOAST) during
1995. Materials from it are on file at the project office.

Quoted from the Albany Common Council minutes for January 6, 1729 as printed in the Annals of Albany 6:40-41.

Map showing Philip Wendell's Beaverkill property in 1802. Adapted from the City Engineer's map collection #328, microfilm from the Albany County Hall of Records.